


the middle of the beginning

by cartoonmoomba



Series: The Promised Land [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character building, a strange creature, and her dying mother, ft. newborn Lieal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 21:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13373880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: The creature comes for her as she is born...A drabble to establish an approaching relationship in my OC's present.





	the middle of the beginning

The creature comes for her as she is born. 

The appearance of the ghastly thing does not surprise her mother, for whom the creature has been a constant, unwanted companion for the entirety of her life - for all the women of her bloodline, as far back as the tales of their clan go. And what a horrible, sad thing it is: faceless, with a void where its heart should be (were it to have one, in this vaguely humanoid form it manifests) and a croaking, wheezing voice like harsh wind through the boughs of her beloved forest. It lingers in the shadows and watches, silent, as the woman dares not scream herself hoarse bearing her daughter unto the world. She is alone: for a brief, fleeting moment, she is glad for the creature’s presence. She wishes for the hand of her sister to clutch, for her own mother to place a wet rag over her burning forehead and soothe her with kind words. But there is none to help her, none to watch her labour in between the gnarled roots of an old tree. Even the forest stands still, holding its breath as she bites at her lips in a bid for silence until she tastes naught but blood and pain.

Oh, and what pain it is - even as she feels her daughter leave her body, her wailing breaking through the stillness, she can feel herself fading. Whichever gods watch over her tonight, she knows they mean to leave the newborn child motherless. It is a heartbreak unlike any other she has felt in her short life and makes the tears come from her eyes anew, mourning for the life her daughter will be left to lead.

With effort she hefts herself up as best she can and gropes for the dagger she has brought to cut the cord binding the babe to her body. It is not clean, for her hands are shaking, and she has only attended one birthing prior to her own. But in her arms she holds the crying child, the both of them covered in blood and bodily fluids, and the child’s mother brings her close to her chest and sobs.

In the shadows, the creature watches, and its eyes - were it to have any - meet the woman’s. The Keeper feels herself tremble - or rather, she never had stopped - as she lifts her chin, cradling her newborn, and addresses the creature for the first time in centuries of her bloodline’s silence.

“I have nothing to give you,” she tells it, her voice broken and hushed. She dares not attract the attention of the Twelveswood, nor the men she knows are scouring it for her. “But please, keep watch over my child. The world will do its best to break her. She will have no family. The Twelveswood will not accept her as their own. All she will have in this world is _you_.”

The creature shifts where it stands, its cloak and bones groaning in protest at the movement. It makes to approach her and the Keeper flinches instinctively as the stench of decay hits her delicate senses, the rotting of dead things strong in the air as it moves across the wet, early-morning ground. It pauses a mere ilm before her, and it takes her a moment to realize that it is trying to speak.

“…I…” the voice comes from nowhere visible on the creature’s body and by the  _gods_ , she is frightened of this demon’s rough, croaking tenor but she must be brave for her child. The creature struggles to speak for the first time since her ancestors shunned it and bade it into the darkness for all its eternity. It finds that it does not quite remember how to speak - had it even known, before? Oh, it must have,  _it must have_ , for it remembers being more. It does not remember more _what_  - just  _more_. It was more, once upon a time, and it desires to be so again.

“…I…” It groans, unearthly and unholy, in a voice not meant for the mortal world. “…accept…”

The Keeper’s tears do not stop, but she notes that her child’s do. She can feel the babe’s excited heartbeat flutter against her own, skin over skin, and she finds herself in love for the first and last time in her life.

She does not want to part with her child, but she knows that she must. The sky is growing lighter overhead signalling the coming of the morning, and with it, undoubtedly the platoon and their dogs hunting her down. If she wants the babe to live then she must leave at once - to be found, to be dealt with, or to be taken naturally by the gods themselves under the light of the Gridanian sun.

 _Oh, if only the gods were so kind,_  she thinks bitterly. No - her death will not be swift, and it will not be kind.

The girl stirs in her arms and large eyes blink open and her mother’s breath catches in her throat. Blue, just like the sky. Blue, just like her own.

“Oh, my darling girl,” she whispers brokenly to her child. “I love you so. Be brave, and be kind to the world. Do not let it break you. Be strong, my little one, and un-caged like a free bird. And please, do not hate me for what must be done.”

The wind in the tree she is bracketed by whispers above her, and the miqo'te knows that it is time to part with her child. Stiltingly, with exhaustion and dread both weighing down her arms, she holds out her child to the silent creature watching them both.

“Take her to safety,” she bids it, hating herself for every word that comes from her mouth. “Ensure she  _remains_  safe. And do not show yourself to her unless she is in dire need of you.”

Words, like many things in life, have power - and if only her predecessors had chosen to speak to the creature haunting their lives instead of being taught to fear it from the moment of their birth, then perhaps they could have learned earlier that commands had  _power_. The creature would obey them; it would strain against the constrains, trying to learn and test the limits and loopholes, but it would nevertheless  _obey_.

All the aether it absorbed from the fallen during the Autumn War had fed it, made it hunger for the warmth of a life close to itself unlike the brief glimpses of it that the creature could catch before the souls within it winked out. And so when it holds its arms out for the child - body creaking, unused to such movements - it does so eagerly;  _hopefully_. It aches for the child, in a way it has not yearned for something in a long, long time.

If it had ever had any maternal instinct, it does not feel it as the child is placed in its arms. What it feels, instead, is that  _hunger_ , and awe: the babe has opened her eyes once more, and she is looking at the one holding it.  _She was looking at it_. That was two people now, for the first time in a time longer than it could remember. 

The creature realizes that, somehow, it is trembling.

“Go,” the Keeper before it chokes out, her eyes bloodshot and staring resolutely at everything but the child she is leaving behind. “ _Go_ , and do not forget my words.” She meets its gaze - or where she feels it is gazing at her from, spreading a chill and disgust down her spine unlike anything other - with a stubborn, trembling jaw and all the force her dying body can offer her. “ _Keep her safe._ ”

The creature watches the Keeper move her body in slow, torturous motions before she is standing once again. Covered in sweat, blood, and all else that came with birthing, the woman begins making her way towards the eastern border. The creature spends a brief moment mourning the coming passing of the Keeper, before turning its attention back to the child. It will not be able to take care of it and provide all that newborns needs, but it can find someone who will. It can find someone wandering the Twelveswood in the early morning, someone with a kind heart, who will know what to do with the orphan girl.

And yes, the creature decides suddenly then with a bout of anger it has not felt in centuries. The child will be an _orphan_ \- her mother dead, and with no father to speak of for the man that had assaulted her mother and now hunted her down like she was a  _mutt_  was not worthy of acknowledgment. The creature will make certain that this child will never know of the monster her  _father_  had chosen to be.

The forest around them whispers, green leaves rustling in the wind. The creature can sense that it will not be welcome to stay any longer in the coming moments - not that the elementals ruling the land with a fickle grip could do much against it, but they certainly could to the child. They could do plenty to the child, and the creature would not allow it.

It fades into the shadows as silently as it had come, moving easily from one plane to the next, ignoring the cries and screams that accost it the moment reality shifts. The babe in its arms snuffles and the creature wonders if she can also hear them, but - now is not the time for idle curiosity. It has a caretaker for its new progeny to find, and it can sense one on the opposite side of the Twelveswood, moving about close to the city.

It is not a simple task, to leave the newborn in the roots of a large, sick oak it can sense the caretaker quickly approaching. The brief warmth the child had afforded it had made it realize that there were many things it no longer remembered, and many things it had once wanted that it could also not remember. But, its time would come - it did not know when, but it knew that it would and when it did, it would be ready for it. It would be ready for the child to approach it of her own free will, and then - well, then the creature would remember what it was that it had so terribly wanted. And, most importantly, it would no longer be  _alone_  in the cold and the silence, broken only by the screams of the dead it had swallowed whole. It would have someone living and burning like a small sun to converse with, to touch, to teach. To  _love_ \- although it did not quite know it yet.

The creature bids the child one last, lingering look and steps into the shadows. And then it settles in and eagerly begins waiting for that day to come.

 


End file.
